Los Siete Guerreros

I've been thinking about this one for a while.

1. MaíIz

Foods made principally from corn: tortillas of all sizes and colors, tostadas, pozole, pinole, tamales, esquite, elote, tlacoyos, chalupas, sopes, gorditas, atole, chilatole, and mucho mas.


2. Frijol
I counted 11 varieties of beans growing up the cornstalks in Tomas' milpa. To extract the beans from the pod, you spread the pods on a flat surface and beat them with a stick all monket-like until all the pods have split open to reveal the bounty.

3. Chile

These chiles are known as "chiles de amor" because they are eaten "de a mordida." I can't eat anything without chiles now.

4. Nopal

Mexicans eat a lot of these slimy vegetables, after cutting off the spines first. Nopal is like a double-whammy because it also produces tuna, a delicious fruit.

5. Amaranto
Always puffed, most often encountered as "alegría" the candy made from amaranth and some sweetener like sugar packed into a bar or disc shape. Alegría is a throwback to an aztec meal made from amaranth, blood, and spirulina. The spaniards forbade it because it made the aztecs so strong.
6. Pulque
Pulque is an alcoholic beverage made from maguey, a type of agave that I think we 'mercans call century plant. After about 15 years, the plant is ready to tap. You cut out the middle leaves and out flows the nectar, many liters of it that have to be collected twice a day. The nectar is thick like watery cream, and is fermented in the pulquerías and sweetened obscenely before being served. Tomás grew up tending his father's cows and magueyes, two surprisingly similar beasties.
This plant still has a few years left before being ready to tap.

7. Tequesquite
Tequesquite is a mineral salt that the mexicans here use when cooking some dishes. It's not much to look at.

These are los Siete Guerreros that have sustained the mexica people for centuries. They need no other comestible to live and thrive. With the addition of squash and the subtraction of pulque, which I have unfortunately only tried once, it is what I eat too.

Eats

NICKY!

What do you eat in México, besides bugs?

Here is what we eat. It's not interesting. Mostly it's just cause I want to see how it is in México. The quantities are not recorded for to protect the innocent:

(Max)
Peanut-buttre
Fresh Pumpkin
Fresh Pumpkin Seeds
Cinnamon
Wine
Vineagre
Salmon
Cabbage
Flax Seed
Onion
Salsa
Kale
Ginger
Sweet Potato
Lentil
Green Tea
Fresh-roasted Coffee
Molasses
Vanilla
Cayenne Pepper
Black Pepper
Fresh Roasted Peanuts
Can't forget garlacke

(Mom)
Peanut-butter
Jam
Honey
Bread
Black Tea
Coffee
Sweet Potato
Salmon
Lentil
Wine

Mexican FT Chiapas Organic $5.40

O STREET ROAST


Procedure (Convection Oven):
--Heat oven to > 400 degrees Fahrenheit
--Place green coffee beans onto a perforated pan and into the oven
--Notice aroma, crackling, and darkening of the beanlets
--Take them out when they are roasted to satisfaction
--Dump them into a colander
--Shake them with modest vigour to remove the chaff and cool the beans to preven excessive roasting
--Store them in a jar in a cool dry place
--Do not seal for twelve hours to allow for CO2 escapage & full maturation of flavour
--Enjoy the smell of fresh roasted coffee as it permeates the upholstery and the domestic environment
--Use that smell to prove the existence of God











UPDATE: Second Batch, Not Botched, But Blended!


The second batch was almost an unqualified success. The biggest difficulty to overcome without a proper roaster is the convection oven's propensity to distribute its heat unevenly. This time there were clear discrepancies in the color of the beans--the pizza-pan was populated like our own beloved globe, tribes of like-skinned bodies clustered in xenophobic enclaves and scattered about the diverse regions of its surface. But then descended my heavy hand as a force of globalisation and tossed them all indiscriminately into a wire colander, shook them about and watched their frictional interplay.

That was last night. This morning...harmony amongst the clans.

Grinding is the best thing I've every smelled, and the coffee is sublime.

The Birds Don't Like the Bread...

Here's a small report from the car-port coop: there are still five of them, and they still roost in the rafters pounce from above like velociraptors, and they still don't lay eggs, and they eat anything. Well...almost anything. Interestingly, even creatures with no brains seem to maintain certain gastronomical standards, not deigning to indulge in comestibles deemed beneath their feathered dignity.

Don't believe me? If Mom will oblige, she'll upload the photo from her wee sleeket in which one can distinctly make out the alabaster block lying undefiled in the center of the greenhouse. This is the remnant of your bread, Lex, which has not followed the usual pattern of peck-marks into oblivion like most edibles introduced to the fowlry. It has not perceptibly changed since it left the bread-box...two weeks since! I expect some sort of explanation/exculpation in the comments, sir! Special recipe with arsenic?

Here is the picture. Love, Mom

Deviations

I just got back from my meta-trip to Veracruz and Oaxaca. My pictures from Veracruz didn't turn out well because there is too much plant life crowding the frame and the lighting is weird. The best quality picture was the one of my chicken-poxed arm from the bugbites. Fortunately, the bugbites are the only thing I have to complain about.

The picture is from an indigenous community in Oaxaca, with an accurate representation of the goat to human ratio.

Thanksgiving, A review of

It goes without saying that the 2010 Buendia Family Thanksgiving was a total disaster. 

Lex drank wine the entire day. 

We cut the back out of the turkey and smashed it down as low as possible, as suggested by Mark Bittman, which made it look like it was dead (which it was). The idea was to create more surface area, so the turkey would cook faster. Bittman said 35 minutes. We figured 75 minutes. Instead it took more than 2 hours, so our dinner was later than we had anticipated. 

The guests got bored waiting for the dang bird to cook:

Mom drank too much:

Finally, we could put the food on the table, join hands, and each say what we are thankful for. 

"I'm thankful I am not a turkey."

Thanksgiving Day Menu:

Appetizers

Fresh bread (by Max), king salmon lachs, cheese, roasted almonds, apple slices

Dinner

Triple D Farm roast turkey

Quinoa, giblet, mushroom (compliments of Lex), onion, ginger & dried cranberry dressing

Mashed Alaska Yukon Gold potatoes (made by Dave Morris)

Roasted beets with garlic and walnut dressing (Mark Bittman recipe), plus lemon

Lex's sauerkraut

Tebhen's Mom's sauerkraut and bread&butter pickles

Rhubarb, apple, onion chutney

Fresh cranberry orange relish (with ginger)

Dessert

Lex's huckleberry & currant cheesecake

Yam coconut pie

We had lots of the usual family togetherness and all that crap. Lukas from Germany and Tebhen joined us. Marta and Jan came, after eating a dinner at Brian Erickson's. Teeka was out of her mind the entire day...and weekend. She spent most of the time in the garage in the back of the Baja. Later, she decided she liked the ski bags behind the ski rack.

The nice thing is we got to ski that morning. It started snowing early in the morning and by 10am we had appx. 4 inches of new snow. This came after dismally warm conditions and pouring rain on Wednesday evening. Thanksgiving morning we skedaddled out to Kincaid to enjoy the new snow. No one enjoyed it as much as Teek. She was in what you call absolute bliss.

All I can say is Thanksgiving is not the same without Nicky.  

God bless us everyone.

A joke to lighten our hearts

Q: How do you combat a plague of crickets?

A: With 40 starving Oaxacans per hectare.


There is also a phrase: "Todo que camina o vuela, a la cazuela." Everything that walks or flies, in the saucepan it fries.